


Outtake: Another Adventure in the History of Basic Cable

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [125]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Not really RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 19:40:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9673139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any, Any, belly dancing class."Traci's choice of adventure proves injurious for some and dangerous for others and finally, finally, something Evan's not good at.





	

"Traci," Rodney said in a low voice, "you know I love you, and I am also a staunch feminist, but I also feel like we're in, you know, enemy territory." He cast a hunted look about them.  
  
He, Joe, and Evan were the only males in the room. _Only._ Apart from Traci, who was wearing black yoga pants (the baggy kind, not the legging kind), all of the other women were wearing exotic gear - pants that flared from the knee down, fancy glittery shawls, belts of jangling coins, little bustle-like thingies with dangling curled chiffon (and Rodney despaired that he even knew what chiffon was), crop tops and halter tops and other midriff tops or even some bras that had been bedazzled within an inch of their lives. Some wore humongous skirts that seemed to be made of hundreds of yards of fabric.  
  
All of them were standing in a clump, talking to each other and rather decidedly not talking to Rodney or the others.  
  
"Are we going to get kicked out?" Joe asked in a low voice. "Or drowned in glitter?"  
  
"Now now," Evan said reasonably, "this is Traci's Adventure, and I'm sure she did adequate research."  
  
Evan, Rodney noticed, was in the best strategic position to beat a hasty retreat, closest to the door. Hypocrite.  
  
But then two men stepped into the room, both of them tall and broad. Both wore dusty jeans, heavy jackets over flannel shirts, and looked like lumberjacks, minus the beards. One looked about as tall as Joe, with dark blond hair and green eyes. The other was as tall as Ronon and just as broad, with shaggy dark hair and eyes like Joe's, too many colors to name but probably 'hazel' on his driver's license.  
  
All of the women turned, and Rodney expected them to act as one, forcefully boot the men out, but then the bigger one shrugged off his jacket and toed off his boots, set them aside. He unbuttoned his flannel shirt and shrugged it off as well, took off his socks, put one in each boot (a neat freak like Evan, then) and held out a hand.  
  
The shorter man handed him a duffel bag, and the taller man reached into it - and drew out a long piece of cloth. He tied it around his hips like a sash, and then he moved to the front of the room.  
  
Rodney blinked. "Wait a second -"  
  
"Ladies, gentlemen, apologies for my tardiness. Got a bit tied up with the day job. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Samir. Why don't we do a quick round of introductions while Dean sets up?"  
  
Dean had also shed his jacket, but instead of undressing further he dragged a chair over from the corner and sat down on it, reached into the giant duffel bag and drew out a drum, rested it across his knees.  
  
The women introduced themselves. Some of them had ordinary names, like Angela and Sarah and Betsy, and some of them had more exotic-sounding names, like Dahlia and Kalila and Atropa.  
  
Traci introduced herself, smiling brightly, and Samir said, "Yes, I remember we spoke on the phone."  
  
Evan introduced himself, so Joe followed his lead.  
  
And Rodney said, "I'm Meredith," without even thinking.  
  
Evan and Joe stared at him.  
  
But Samir smiled and welcomed them, asked Dean for a beat, and it was time to warm up.  
  
Samir had them stretch out first, and then he asked Dean for a faster beat, and that was when things got difficult. Fast.  
  
Samir explained dance posture - toes forward, feet hip-width apart, pelvis tucked, chest lifted, chin up, shoulders back, arms up - and it made sense to Rodney, protecting his back while he danced. That was smart.  
  
Where Samir had initially looked, well, like a giant lumbering lumberjack, his muscles rippling rather intimidatingly, when he assumed dance posture, something about him changed, and he looked - well. Graceful. Like Traci did, when she was dancing. Strong and sure, but graceful. The transformation was a bit more alarming on a man as large as Samir, though.  
  
Samir smiled at them. "All right, just a quick step touch, side to side."  
  
Stepping side to side Rodney could do. He wasn't a great dancer, but as a musician he had rhythm, and he could keep a beat.

"All right, now add a head slide, side to side, with each step. If that's too fast, you can do it at half-tempo. If head slides and stepping is too much, you can do a head slide in place," Samir said. He raised his arms above his head, palms together, and okay, Rodney had seen that in movies before, girls in _I Dream of Jeanie_ costumes doing that.  
  
But Rodney's head couldn't do that.  
  
Samir instructed them on appropriate technique - don't tilt your head side to side, your chin should remain level, like it's sliding back and forth on an invisible shelf, or you're trying to touch your cheekbones to the sides of an invisible box.  
  
Traci could do a head-slide just fine and keep dancing.  
  
Joe and Evan managed passable head slides but, like several other women, stood still.  
  
So Rodney gave up with the stepping and tried with the head sliding, and just when he thought he'd gotten it, Samir said,  
  
"Don't forget your dance posture."  
  
Rodney immediately straightened up, but he lost the head slide, and Samir said, "All right, moving on to shoulder isolations. This is the foundation of a chest shimmy, but the movement comes from your shoulders, not your chest." He demonstrated. "Now, this isn't a twist - your hips should remain as they are. This is an upper-body isolation, so I shouldn't be hearing any of your coins as you perform this movement."  
  
Traci could also perform this movement perfectly. Joe managed one shoulder but not the other. Evan, Rodney was relieved to note, hadn't figured this move out either. Rodney wasn't sure how to move just his shoulder and not, well, everything else attached to it. Like the rest of his body.  
  
Then came chest slides and chest lifts and chest circles, and they did it all again with their hips (with the added horror of hip drops - hips were _not supposed to move that way_ ).  
  
Best as Rodney could tell, belly dancing was not a fluid, beautiful, sensual thing. It demanded robot-like control over one's own body and a systematic dismantling of any sense of coordination. Every now and again, Samir threw in a challenge.  
  
"I know this seems kind of advanced, but you're getting this stuff pretty well, so give it a try."  
  
If Rodney had thought moving one body part at a time was hard, moving multiple body parts independently of each other but at the same time was a disaster.  
  
He would admit, however, that Samir shimmying his hips while walking backward and doing a belly roll was damn impressive.  
  
After technique, Samir gave everyone a break to run and get drinks. Traci was beaming and pleased, chatting happily with one of the girls with an exotic-sounding name - Shoshanna? - and asking about her dance experience. Evan's expression was thoughtful while he stood in line at the water fountain. Joe had started blushing around the time they started doing chest shimmies and hadn't stopped. Rodney was worried about his blood pressure.  
  
And Rodney - he was sore as hell. "I feel like I've done like a million crunches."  
  
"A lot of the upper body isolations give you a great core workout," Shoshanna said, smiling at him. "And all that hip work will really strengthen your quads."  
  
After technique and drinks, Samir explained they would be learning how to use zills, which were tiny finger cymbals, like castanets. He had some practice pairs for people to use, and plenty of the other dancers had spare pairs they shared around. Shoshanna and Kalila showed Rodney, Evan, Joe, and Traci how to wear theirs and helped them adjust the elastic straps with safety pins, and then Samir explained how zills worked in the music, that they were musical instruments first and props second, and that using them in dance was a bit of a dying art.  
  
He taught them the most basic zill pattern, which he called the _giddy-up_ ("A very technical term, I assure you"). They started off slow, to a beat Dean was keeping. Samir warned them not to speed up, to stay with Dean, and Dean warned them when they were speeding up. Samir explained that in a lot of ways zilling fast and nonstop was easy, because if you fumbled a beat people were less likely to notice, but on a slow beat all the dancers had to be perfectly in sync.

Samir also explained that it was dangerous to learn how to zill while standing still, because a dancer had to be able to zill and dance at the same time.  
  
So he started small, with step touches while they played to the beat (Dean sped up a bit, and it was easier to keep up with him). Joe and Traci could keep a beat all right, as could Rodney (again, musicianship paid off), but Evan was hopeless at it and was reduced to just hitting the main beat in every measure.  
  
Rodney could step and zill - it was like dancing and clapping or snapping at the same time. Not a big deal. But then Samir had them walk forward, and walk backward, and wiggle their hips.  
  
And turn.  
  
That was when everything went wrong. A four-point turn wasn't a big deal, not at all. Rodney could do that. Only he lost track of his zilling pattern fast, and fumbled to catch up. If Evan was hopeless at stepping and zilling, he was even more hopeless at turning and zilling.  
  
He was stumbling along behind Joe, watching his feet and trying to keep in rhythm, and then Dean picked up the beat, and they turned faster, and Evan said,  
  
"Oh, _sh-_ "  
  
And there was a yelp and a clang.  
  
Dean toppled off the chair, clutching his eye, and Evan said, "I am so, so sorry! It was loose and it must have slipped off -"  
  
Samir was at Dean's side in an instant. "Hey, you okay?"  
  
Dean swore under his breath fit to rival a Marine, then said, "Yeah. Just. Flying zill. Like a ninja star. To the face."  
  
Samir managed to pry Dean's hand away from his face. "Yeah, that's gonna bruise. No blood, though. Didn't get your actual eyeball, did it?"  
  
"No. Gonna tell Bobby and Garth I got hit by a werewolf, though."  
  
"You do that."  
  
Evan was crouched beside Dean as well, fretting and apologizing.  
  
"And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we make sure our zills are on tight." Samir patted Evan's shoulder. "No worries. He's taken worse hits."  
  
"Thanks for the sympathy, little brother," Dean grumbled.  
  
Traci said, "Want me to take a look at it? I have medical training."  
  
Dean shook his head. "Nah. Sammy's right. I've had worse. But I think I'm gonna sit the rest of class out."  
  
Samir nodded. "All right. Thanks. Kalila, could you come take over drumming for Dean?"  
  
Evan said in a low voice, to Rodney, "I would really like to disappear right now. Beam me up, please."  
  
Rodney nodded his agreement. "I sympathize. But it can't get any worse, can it?"  
  
It could. With veils. Rodney had never been afraid of silk before, but after getting tangled in it and almost suffocating in it, he was never touching it again as long as he lived.  
  
But after class, Traci was over the moon with how much fun she'd had, and Rodney decided that the experience was worth it.  
  
So long as no one ever mentioned it again.  
  
Ever.


End file.
